Case Study: Asana

Asana is a cloud-based project management software that also allows teams to communicate and work together without having to leverage e-mail. In 2015, they wanted to launch a massive redesign of their website. The functionality of their website is instrumental to Asana’s success, since it’s the source for new sign-ups, so it was critical that every decision they made would be planned carefully and driven by data from analysis and experimentation data.

Because the website is so critical to Asana’s success, they chose to experiment on more than 50% of their new components over a ten-month period before officially rolling out the redesign. This required a tight and coordinated plan, allowing them not only to experiment on the original elements, but also to plan for iterative experiments based on the results. As a result, for example, Asana’s design team experimented with over 50 different iterations of the homepage alone, taking the time to find the design that created the best return in sign-ups.

Ashley Kember, Websites Program Lead at Asana, said of their optimization process, “We had tested 50% of the new website components and felt confident that they would perform well. On launch day we could focus on making sure everything went smoothly and not worry as much about how our metrics would be impacted.” By executing meticulously planned experiments prior to the official launch of their full redesign, not only did they manage to get conclusive data on each new component, but Asana also was able to more efficiently use their team when the website finally launched.

Effectively prioritizing experimentation allowed Asana to coordinate a high volume of experiments over a relatively short period of time, allowing them to feel confident in their redesigned website when it finally launched. Creating a precise priority structure can mean the difference between success and failure of a roadmap.